Where excellence is the norm: inside the £10m summer camp that's a hothouse for Britain's brainiest children

Thirteen-year-old Parivash Jeelani is just like any other teenager – almost. Instead of spending her summer holiday taking it easy she has opted to study mathematics on an intense three-week course.

Parivash, from Southampton, is one of 100 pupils taking part this week in Europe's first ever summer camp for brainy children.

Other students, aged from 11 to 15, are studying chemistry, creative writing, environ-mental science and ecology, drama and even philosophy.

The "brain camp" at the University of Warwick is the first time some of Britain's most gifted pupils have been brought together at a summer school. And organisers plan a much larger event next year, with around 900 youngsters.

The initiative is part of the Government's £70m Gifted and Talented programme, launched to broaden the horizons and stretch the minds of particularly adept pupils.

On Thursday, David Miliband, the new schools minister will visit the summer camp to see first hand the strategy in action. Mr Miliband told The Independent on Sunday: "The summer school is good in itself but symbolises a wider point.

"For too long in this country, poverty of aspiration has combined with snobbery about 'boffins' to short change bright pupils. 'Too clever by half' is still an insult rather than praise. Yet our future as a country depends on getting more children, whatever their background, to develop their potential.

"The children have the potential and we have to help them fulfil it to reach our potential as a nation."

The summer camp is already paying dividends for Parivash, who decided to take part in the project after her cousin read about it and put in an application. She said: "I am learning a lot more about maths than I do in school. I am also learning to connect with people. We all get together for socials, which is cool."

Parivash said the average day began with breakfast at 8am and then it was work, work, work until about 4.30pm or 5pm before the youngsters, from a variety of backgrounds and parts of the country, took part in the activities laid on for them at the university campus.

It is hoped that the contacts the children make at the summer camp will be maintained in a follow-up programme.

Organisers feel that children with a high capacity for learning or a specific gift need to talk to each other and to share their experiences, and should continue to do so when they are back in their ordinary schools.

Run by the Government, the University of Warwick, Oxford Brookes University and Johns Hopkins University in the US, the programme is open to young people from all backgrounds. Care has been taken to make sure that children from less privileged backgrounds are not left behind and the summer school does not become a middle-class-only event.

A team of headhunters have been working since February, scouring the country for the brightest children, particularly in deprived areas of London, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

The children selected to go on the first summer camp, being held at a cost of £10m, were described as the "very best out of the top 5 per cent in the country".

But critics claim the "brain camps" threaten to write off thousands of working-class youngsters. In a report for the Government, to be submitted in September, Professor Joan Freeman, a psychologist at the University of Middlesex, will warn ministers they are favouring a tiny proportion of middle-class achievers by relying on the recommendations of teachers and test scores to identify the children with the greatest potential.

"A great deal of effort should be put into finding children who are not showing their talents at present. The current approach seems to me somewhat unbalanced," Professor Freeman said.

"These summer schools will take children who are already achieving, the tip of the iceberg, rather than paying attention to the huge potential of the talent underneath. I'm pleased that the Government has committed so much money to gifted children. But I'm convinced that there's a lot of talent that we're simply missing."

Next month the Academy for Gifted and Talented Children will open. The first batch of children at the summer camp will be able to use it once they have returned home to take online tests and receive tuition. The Academy also plans outreach programmes for gifted children in disadvantaged areas and will mastermind next year's summer camp, which will include tuition in a wider range of subjects and skills.

As well as promoting an advanced curriculum, the Academy hopes it will change attitudes to brainy children, who are sometimes stigmatised both by their peers and by adults. One of the organisers said: "Children here have told me they love their school but they are sometimes singled out and feel a bit different, whereas here all the kids are clever. No one's saying you are the boffin in the corner. One child told me: 'I love it here. I feel normal'."

Fifteen-year-old with a first

Earlier this month, Iskander Yusof, 15, and his sister Noraisha, 19, graduated with a first and 2:2 in maths from Warwick University. They were the youngest siblings ever to go to a British university when Iskander started his degree aged 12.

In 1998, their sister Sufiah Yusof won a place at St Hilda's College, Oxford, aged 13, to study maths. In 2000 she went missing for two weeks, blaming her parents for overpressurising her.

In September 1999, 10-year-old Samuel Solomi from Paignton in Devon won a place at the Open University to study pure maths. His family could not afford his fees and were exempted from paying them.

In 1998, Alexander Faludy, a severely dyslexic 15-year-old, won a place at Cambridge University to read theology and history of art.

Ganesh Sittampalam was 13 when he gained a first in maths from Surrey University in 1992, after studying for one day a week.

In 1984 Ruth Lawrence went to Oxford University aged 12 to study maths. She graduated just before her 14th birthday and now lectures at the University of Jerusalem.